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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23914525">Few and Far Between</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/theemdash/pseuds/theemdash'>theemdash</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>SG-MCU (MCU/SG-1 Fusion) [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Stargate Fusion, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, First Kiss, M/M, Pining, Self-Sacrificing Steve Rogers, So much angst, Stranded, canon exists in a blender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 20:01:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,812</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23914525</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/theemdash/pseuds/theemdash</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>MCU/SG-1 Fusion. When the fire rain seemingly destroys the stargate on Edora, Steve has to contemplate life on an alien planet... while separated from Bucky. Inspired by the SG-1 episode "A Hundred Days."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>SG-MCU (MCU/SG-1 Fusion) [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1707349</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Few and Far Between</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Many thanks to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/sopdetly/">sopdetly</a> for prompting me to write a Stucky Stargate AU and for putting up with all of the angst.</p><p>If this were a TV series, this fic would fit in Season 3.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Two nights ago, the fire rain fell from the sky, meteors skipping over the alien atmosphere with such frequency and enough sparking glory to put any fourth of July celebration to shame. Bucky turned to Steve, a smile lighting his face, and reached a hand between them. The back of his hand was speckled with dirt, grit the only barrier between their skin. Steve wrapped his fingers into Buck's clammy palm, and Bucky squeezed back, twisting his hand so they could lace their fingers together. Steve shifted closer, eyes drifting to Natasha and Stark who weren't paying attention to their teammates, but Steve kept their linked hands hidden behind his body.</p><p>He didn't say anything to Bucky.</p><p>Bucky didn't say anything to him.</p><p>But Steve felt the tension between them drain, coalesce between their fingers, a silent promise to work this out once they were alone and back on Earth.</p><p>Sometimes his feelings for Bucky made more sense on an alien planet. When everything familiar was stripped away, Steve had Bucky. He didn't need anything else to survive the craziness that came with the stargate and fighting aliens and saving the universe. If he had Bucky by his side, he could weather anything.</p><p>Which was why two days later, standing at the crater where the stargate used to be, surrounded by Edorans and not a single person from Earth, Steve felt a tether snap.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>* * *</p>
</div><p>Sweat rolled down Steve's back, a tickling caress that reminded him uncomfortably of the hot showers at the SGC, steam fogging between them and Bucky's laugh echoing off the walls. </p><p>He shook his head to banish the memory and cut into the hard-packed alien soil with the borrowed shovel. The Edoran stargate was somewhere underneath all this, not destroyed. </p><p>God, please, not fucking destroyed, his only way back to Earth.</p><p>The sun beat him, blistering his skin despite his long sleeves. Sharon, their liaison with the Edorans, brought water every few hours, whenever she could get away from rebuilding the town. Steve's life wasn't the only one flattened by the fire rain. Sometimes he surfaced enough to remember that. Sometimes he helped them find food. Sometimes he helped heft a wall. His enhanced strength had to be good for something other than reaching for a planet too many light-years away.</p><p>At night, Bucky was a ghost between his sheets, a hand he held once on an alien planet, a body he'd held countless times while it healed, lips he'd kissed when they'd been too young and stupid to name the thing growing between them and too afraid of being caught. Almost was worse than never. Never again was worst of all. He stifled his tears and focused on solutions. Dig up the stargate, find the DHD, dial home.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>* * *</p>
</div><p>"We need your help." </p><p>Sharon's quiet words were a plea that shattered Steve. He'd been at the dig site a month, rotating crews of Edorans helping him move rock and dirt in between caring for each other. They'd lost people, too, had friends and families as separated from them as Steve was from home. But they had familiar soil under their feet, even if the stars above their heads were no longer as trustworthy and comforting.</p><p>He wanted to argue. To tell Sharon it wasn't his place, this wasn't his world to rebuild. He wanted to rip her cottage apart, throw the table with the earthenware dishes they'd salvaged, throw the stew in the fire so he wouldn't throw himself in the flames. "<i>I</i> need your help," he wanted to scream, but Steve Rogers was built to fight for others. He was built to serve and protect and sacrifice himself for what other people needed.</p><p>How many times had Bucky yelled at Steve to think of his own life?</p><p>The stargate was under the dirt. It wasn't destroyed. It couldn't be. It couldn't be.</p><p>Steve took a deep breath and tucked his dog tags back under his shirt, unaware of when he'd gripped them. </p><p>"Of course," he said, uncertain of what he'd say if he allowed himself more words.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>* * *</p>
</div><p>His hours at the dig site shrank. The Edorans needed him to contribute. They needed fishers and builders and gardeners, and even though Steve was a soldier first, he could fake his way through those other things, especially if those other things kept him alive. Alive, he still had a chance of making it home.</p><p>Sharon was good to him. She put a roof over his head, food in his belly, and she said nothing when he kicked blankets on the floor and barely caught himself from screaming Bucky's name. Same nightmare, drawn from his memory of leaving Bucky on the goa'uld pel'tac, Bucky's blood staining Steve's hands as Steve left him there to die.</p><p>She came to him after one of the bad ones. Put her hand on his shoulder and pushed him back into bed. He went down without resistance, and she climbed into bed beside him, wrapping an arm around his chest and resting her head on his shoulder. Her weight was too light, but still reassuring, and he fell into dreamless sleep, which was better than the other thing. </p><p>She roused before him and said nothing about where she'd slept, but the next night she stopped him from going to his cot, took his hand, and led him to her bed.</p><p>"It's more comfortable," she finally said.</p><p>They'd taken the mattress from her old home. Sharon had restuffed it and stitched up the tears. The bedding Steve salvaged from one of her neighbors when others confirmed the owners had made it through the 'gate. It was sad gratitude for housing him when anyone could have turned him away. He wasn't their people. They weren't his either.</p><p>"I'm fine on the cot."</p><p>"The offer is open," she said, but she let him go.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>* * *</p>
</div><p>Steve kept his radio on him until the day he forgot to wear his tac-vest. He ran home when he realized he'd left it, slammed open the door, seized the radio and clicked it on, desperately calling, sure that the unwatched pot would finally boil. </p><p>Static. </p><p>Nothing.</p><p>He slumped to his knees, disappointment clawing at his heart. </p><p>And then he realized he'd thought of Sharon's house as "home," rocked the radio to his chest, and cried.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>* * *</p>
</div><p>The stargate was buried. It hadn't been destroyed. But getting there was a problem Steve couldn't easily solve. For the first time he wished he had Stark's explosives or one of the thousand devices he was always tinkering with. He could be on a planet with rudimentary technology and Tony would have configured some machine to dig through the night. But it was just Steve and his muscle, and even he had limits.</p><p>Steve cut between the trees in the recovering forest, new life springing through the deep trenches plowed by meteorites. In another three months, he might not recognize the terrain. He sighed. Six months away from home would be a long time. He gripped the radio on his shoulder, where it belonged, arm across his chest in a mockery of comfort. He hadn't checked in two days, trying to conserve the last of the battery. </p><p>He thumbed it on.</p><p>"—you'll be on your own, so you better dig."</p><p>"Aye, aye, sir."</p><p>Bucky's voice.</p><p>
  <i>Bucky's voice!</i>
</p><p>"Buck?" Steve's voice cracked.</p><p>"Steve!"</p><p>He left the traps he'd been checking, the bag of game, everything that wasn't already strapped to his body, and raced back to the dig site, radio on and Fury yelling orders Steve couldn't quite process over the sound of his recklessly beating heart.</p><p>The stargate was horizontal. Bucky was anchored and digging his way to the surface. Limited supply of oxygen. No reinforcements. Bucky's only backup had to come from above.</p><p>Steve zeroed in on the radio signal, grabbing the abandoned shovel and digging straight down. He yelled for the others to join him. The stargate was here! He'd found it! And cupped a hand over his radio, tilting it to his mouth.</p><p>"I'm coming for you, Buck."</p><p>Bucky's laugh filtered back first. "Naw, I'm coming for you."</p><p>He didn't argue, but he did laugh, and he dug.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>* * *</p>
</div><p>They sat in the same field, looking up at the darkening sky, just over three months since the last time. A walk to stretch their legs had paused in a breather, Steve and Bucky shoulder to shoulder in the grass. The stargate was still mostly buried, but Steve wasn't in as much of a rush to dig it out. </p><p>"Shitty timing," Bucky said after the sun disappeared behind the horizon.</p><p>"Hmm?"</p><p>Bucky nudged Steve's shoulder. "For you to be MIA."</p><p>Steve grinned and leaned into the nudge, chasing the warmth of Bucky's body in the cooling night. They should have grabbed jackets, but Steve hadn't been thinking about more than getting a minute with his best friend. "Not exactly a plan."</p><p>"Still. Shitty timing."</p><p>"Why?" Steve teased, his nerves coiling in his stomach despite his bravado. "Was something happening? Oh, damn. I missed hockey season."</p><p>Too dark to see Bucky roll his eyes, but Steve knew he did.</p><p>"Will you shut up, you punk?" Bucky shoved again, but Steve recovered, heart skipping when Bucky pressed against him, too.</p><p>"Careful, I'm still your CO."</p><p>"You're MIA. I'm leading the team now."</p><p>"Oh? Then I guess this isn't against frat regs." He caught Bucky's cheek and pulled him in for a kiss. Bucky's surprise lasted a second, and then his lips parted and his fingers curled into Steve's shirt. Not their first kiss, but as far as Steve was concerned, it was the first kiss that counted.</p><p>When Steve broke the kiss to suck in a needed breath, Bucky chuckled. "Damnit, I was going to do that. Had worked up the whole gag about you being MIA and off the team, and then—you go and steal the punchline."</p><p>"I waited long enough."</p><p>"Yeah," Bucky whispered, pressing their foreheads together. Steve felt the years between them, the three months on Edora and all the time before when they'd dodged each other and tried to ignore this. "We've got a lot to figure out."</p><p>Steve swallowed. Joking aside, a relationship wouldn't be easy. Frat regs, and Steve was Bucky's CO, and DADT, and all the other red tape and secrecy that would come between them. Being with Bucky would carry with it a constant fear, and the moments of peace would be few and far between.</p><p>But they had an alien planet under their feet and a few days before they'd be back on Earth.</p><p>"It's going to take a while to unbury the 'gate." Steve tilted his head, bringing their mouths together again. "Logistics can wait."</p><p>This time Steve waited for Bucky to kiss him, and when he did, Steve sighed, sinking into Bucky, already feeling like he'd arrived home.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The basic plot and setting is taken from the <i>Stargate: SG-1</i> episode "A Hundred Days."</p><p> </p><p>"DADT" refers to Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which impacts a lot of Stargate slash fanfiction and felt like an appropriate thing to retain for this fusion.</p><p>"pel'tac" is the command center of a goa'uld mother ship</p></blockquote></div></div>
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